59 … And Practice One
"But why do I have these powers then?" Bunnix protested. "Why? If I'm supposed to just sit and watch and do nothing?" She demanded. This was no better than watching news on TV and being frustrated about them, just recording the facts for history.
"Only in a case of an event, caused by magic, that was so bad that it lead to the end of the world, basically, to a point where Ladybug is unable to reverse the damage that was done." Tuzi was speaking with her index finger raised and observed her student carefully.
"Right, once Ladybug is out of the picture, for whatever reason, once the magic villain goes too far and things can't be fixed entirely, okay, I get the difference. So I only watch for Ladybug?" Bunnix tried to interpret and simplify what she was told.
"It is not only that, it is more complicated, there is no simpler way to explain this, but, when it happens, you will know! Now, let me show you my burrow." Tuzi did not wait for Bunnix to affirm she agreed to the last proposal before she called for her power.
"Now, you are still young and you detransform soon after you call for your power, right?" Tuzi asked and got affirmative nod and a hum as a response. "That means you will be able to make your burrow fully only once you are an adult." That was clear.
"Now, whenever you bring a guest to your burrow, use something to cover their eyes, your guests are not supposed to see their future, you know, not all people are able to handle that." Tuzi warned and fetched a bowl that she put on top of Bunnix's head.
"What's this?" Bunnix inquired a she touched the bowl. "Oh it is a simple ceramics bowl." She sounded slightly disappointed. "Although it is beautifully painted." She added offhandedly. "And how am I supposed to learn anything if I do not see the insides of your burrow."
"I will show you what I decide is safe for you." Tuzi replied while she wasn't entirely sure how training was supposed to work.. "You are not supposed to see something else by accident." She turned around and observed the scene around her, she released a long exhausted sigh before she started to tidy up.
They stood in something that resembled a large room. There were plenty of old yellow papers of different sizes scattered all around. Some of them had only letters written all over them, others had pictures painted, with more or less details, few were simple drawings of cave men.
On several pieced of papyrus, these pictures sometimes moved, and few of them were changed as if animated and showed the same scene but from a different angle. Tuzi glanced over the mess that was her burrow with a knowing glare, she knew where everything was supposed to be.
"I think it is all right." Tuzi stated deep in her thoughts. "This is all in order and I do not see you on any of these right now." She glanced once more. "You can remove the bowl now. By the way, you can use something else than a bowl in your burrow once you make one."
"Cool." Bunnix held the bowl. "I might use the same stuff. It doesn't really matter, it is not me who will carry that on my head in my burrow." Then she glanced around, her burrow on the other hand, was going to look far more modern, she was already able to imagine it.
"Now, here you can read about different events in history and you can see a few of them on these drawings and pictures, and if they change, that means these are not yet settled, or you can take one event … " She reached for one large piece of papyrus.
"Here, now you can see what actually happened here, or is going to happen, the burrow is not set in any particular time, there can be multiple time lines and … Um, that is more complicated, now let me show you about this one." Tuzi held out the papyrus.
As she pointed towards the words that were written, a simple drawing on the top of the page changed shape to illustrate the events that were described on the papyrus.
"So this is the visit of a traveller from Europe, he calls himself Marco Polo and he claims he is from Venice, these events unfolded last month when he visited the Khan. He was allowed to wander around and explore the surroundings, quite a rare honour." Tuzi shrugged.
She observed the drawing with concern, it was still moving, there were several outcomes possible, and she was concerned about what was going to unfold, she knew it was important that the travel of that particular person completed.
"And this one?" Bunnix pointed to more elaborate painting of the whole city of Xanadu with two rounds of protective walls, the houses, the tents, the cattle and people and a huge oversized palace painted in the middle of the park.
"This is where and when we met." Tuzi replied. "You can see the permanent palace built from stones and wood and the elaborate mobile palace that you and your friends helped build yesterday and the people who live here."
And she already knew that if they let the story of the city unfold, the palace and all the dwellings were about to be destroyed and abandoned, but that was not their job to fix, that was just the history that was supposed to happen.
"That is the great flood of several thousand years ago." Tuzi explained quickly while Bunnix studied a piece of papyrus that was so wet that droplets of water dripped from it, it depicted waves and several fish, but there was no explanation written on it.
"That story is considered only a legend." Bunnix muttered to herself. She tried to find any clue on the irregular piece of paper that contained the drawing, but there wasn't much to see, and there was no inscription to clarify. "How do you know for sure?"
"It was an old case of a dragon wielder who went slightly … mad?" Tuzi shrugged. "I mean, everything was cleared up by Ladybug of course, but the event remained in human memory. And … actually … there was a service of time travel needed for that one." Tuzi grinned.
"Oh, the dinosaurs." Bunnix grinned at the next drawing. "And the mammoth." She pointed at another one. There were other drawings from the early stages of the Earth's geological past and Bunnix admired the amount of information hidden there.
Tuzi caught a glimpse of Ladybug and Chat Noir she just met during the night on one of the pieces of paper and she observed it with interest. She definitely saw them before, but that was in the future, vary far in the future.
Bunnix was busy while she admired some other depiction that did not require additional explanation and Tuzi searched for more papers with Ladybug and Chat Noir. And there she saw her, she raised her eyes quickly to check, it was her, the Bunnix with pink hair from her burrow, just taller.
She was able to see the time travelling akuma who messed up a timeline temporarily (oh this is such a stupid sentence, really) and she clearly saw when Bunnix chose to become trapped in a piece of stone that was carved with Egyptian symbols.
"But what about that one?" Bunnix asked next as she pointed to a city by the side of an ocean that was painted on another piece of paper. "Or that one." The last piece Bunnix asked about depicted a temple in high mountains.
"These are different places and at different times. In order to make the burrow really work I may have borrowed the powers of the horse miraculous, well the wielder helped me to create this." Tuzi shrugged. "The powers of time travel and teleportation are connected."
"This one." Tuzi pointed to the temple. "This is the temple where the guardians of the miraculous train other guardians and most of the wielders." She explained briefly and waited to get a nod from Bunnix that she understood.
"You were trained there?" Bunnix inquired. "Am I … supposed to be trained there?" She studied the drawing more carefully, it had so many details, much more than the drawings she studied before that one, as if each detail on that picture mattered.
"There are many different duties to train for, the wielders can't really train in the temple, you can't stay transformed there and … and time travelling heroes are not trained in the temple too … in the case that one of us … mess up?" Tuzi tried to be smooth, and failed.
"I can imagine that heroes who are testing their superpowers can do a lot of damage." Bunnix remembered, rather vividly, just how much damage her and Jalil were able to make in their home while they tested their own 'human' powers.
"That is why you can enter the temple only as a civilian." Tuzi smiled. That was such a simple rule, and that was how all the wielders were able to live together and still keep their hero identities a secret from each other, if the teachers insisted on that.
"But here!" Bunnix exclaimed and pointed her finger. "I can see a transformed person enter the temple." Actually, if one didn't have any prior knowledge, that was merely an oddly dressed masked person in front of the temple entrance, but both heroes knew what that meant.
"Let me correct myself ..." Tuzi snatched the paper from Bunnix. "If you enter the temple transformed, your powers are weakened to the point that they become useless and you allow the temple monks to influence you, to … to make you denounce your memories."
"Oh." Bunnix was not sure if she was getting this clearly. She observed the papers and the pictures on them. Suddenly the words started to blur and the pictures were moving like crazy before they disappeared completely. Bunnix held her head and started to feel dizzy.
Tuzi looked unaffected by the circumstances at first, the scroll she was holding showed the picture of the temple that did not change much, but then the older rabbit looked at other papers and many of them turned into a blurry mess, one by one.
"What is going on?" Bunnix screamed. Tuzi frowned and looked from one papyrus to the next, she unfolded several scrolls that were put on the side and checked those too. Some were completely blank, other contained several random words, and there were a few completely garbled.
"Someone is messing up the time lines." Tuzi muttered to herself and observed with caution how yet another one of the scrolls became a garbled mess of characters and unconnected lines that danced around the paper.
"Something like a Timetagger akuma?" Alix was quick to try and think of something that would mess up history like that, and if someone threw persons back to random points in time, history would change. "But that guy was defeated?" Suddenly the two rabbits stared at each other.
"Actually, that guy is far in the future for both of us." Bunnix corrected herself. "Think about it … what if he sent someone like … I don't know, mayor Bourgeois to this time, or earlier or what if he sent himself much further back in time of what if … "
"Stop!" Tuzi raised the palm of her hand. "We need to find the point where it started, a point before it all went wrong." But one look over their papers showed them that there were plenty of garbled moments in all ages of history, future included.
"How do you decide ..." Bunnix trailed off. They were both rather lost in the mess. "That is the future from now … " Bunnix pointed to one of the scrolls that depicted rather modern scenery that only changed a little. "And that one too." She recognized the Eiffel tower on it.
"Quick, there!" Tuzi took the paper with the painting of a harbour city and hung it onto the wall, once it appeared there, the paint started to glow. Bunnix thought that this one was going to be messed up too, but Tuzi grabbed her hand and pulled both of them into the painting.
"This one doesn't flip from one state to another. It has to remain stable to avoid a paradox, whatever is going on, it depends on what happened there." Tuzi explained while they passed the portal, the next moment, both heroes stood in a busy street of a busy old harbour town.
"Why are we here?" Bunnix whispered while she observed her surroundings. "And where are we … and when?" There were so many questions and no answers, nothing to hold on to. "And what are we supposed to do?"
"This moment in time, this place, it wasn't disturbed by whatever messed up the rest of the history." Tuzi explained quickly, her eyes frantically searched their surroundings for anything or anyone that posed danger, but all she saw were several pairs of curious eyes.
"Maybe this is the place and time from which the disturbance came from?" Bunnix suggested. She felt like she was getting a glimpse of the complex duties of a wielder of a time travel miraculous. She had no idea what they were looking for, but she was going to do her best to find it.
"I don't know this place, I don't even know when are we." Tuzi admitted. "I mean, I know that this is a coastal town, a harbour in China, but I have never been here, and I have seen ships like these only in my burrow." She motioned towards large sailboats in the harbour.
"Um, we are in China, definitely." Bunnix concluded quickly as she observed people who moved around them. Few of the people spared them a glance, several pointed a finger and laughed, other simply shook their heads and moved on.
It was a busy harbour, people moved around quickly and mostly minded their own business ans they searched for something to trade. There were parcels wrapped in cloth and plenty of wooden boxes ashore, some were loaded onto ships, other were unloaded and everyone was loud.
"Judging from the shape of those ships this is … this is late eighteenth, perhaps early nineteenth century in my calendar." Bunnix continued. She observed their surroundings with a serious expression and tried to remember what she was taught.
"This is the future." Tuzi stated calmly and observed their surroundings with curiosity. Everything was new to her, it wasn't as grand and covered in gold and marble as the palace of Khan in Xanadu and it wasn't like the temple in Tibet that held magic on its own, but it was enchanting.
"Nah, this is the past." Bunnix grinned and looked around, if she was only able to get a photo of those ships and items they traded, her father would have been proud, although it wasn't as old as the period he studied which was far far further in the past.
That reply made Tuzi laugh out loud and draw more unwanted attention to them, so she pulled Bunnix to hide between several particularly large and smelly barrels. Both of them were relieved when the men who were about to approach them were called up to do something else.
"What's this?" Bunnix pinched her nose and pointed towards a wooden barrel that they were hiding behind. The smell that was coming out from it was too intense to be bearable from that proximity.
"Probably salted fish." Tuzi did the same, she pinched her nose and both of them took a few more steps to find less smelly object to use as their heideout.
"If this is the future, are you supposed to see this?" Bunnix teased while her nose was still closed so the voice came out in a different pitch. "Maybe it is me who should be in charge of what are we supposed to be doing here." She added flatly, but Tuzi smirked and replied nothing.
"This is the place where we are supposed to do something, I just don't know what yet." Tuzi looked at the ships astonished by their size and shape. "That piece of papyrus directed us here, this is the moment when something happens that we have to change. Or maybe there is just something to see."
"I see … " Alix looked around. "This is the age when the opium trade was at its peak, now if we are not allowed to prevent some historic events then ..." She trailed off while Tuzi shook her head. Then they both looked to different directions and tried to see anything out of the ordinary.
"We are not allowed to prevent any event that you consider historic." Tuzi stated bluntly. For her, this was technically the future, but she understood rather well that his was probably ancient past for her companion. "Just look for anything out of the ordinary."
"I don't see anything out of the ordinary." Bunnix noted. Everything she saw seemed like the usual harbour business, well usual for a period about two hundred years before she was born, but still, it resembled old paintings and descriptions rather well.
"Everything I see is out of the ordinary." Tuzi chuckled. "But I do not see anything that would be caused by magic." She sighed. "Or perhaps all of this is." She let her eyes trail over the scene and tried to focus on the details, maybe there was something there.
"Nah, this all worked without magic, trust me." Bunnix replied reassuringly. "If you saw what they had in my time..." She trailed off, because what if she wasn't supposed to tell? What if this was a test to see if she was able to keep a secret.
"I believe I have." Tuzi muttered to herself. Ever since she built that burrow, it was the place where spent a lot of her time, she read and saw in drawings the events that unfolded long ago, depicted in the ancient chants that monks loved to repeat in the temple. But she also had a peek into the future.
"I know I'm not supposed to tell you about the future, but back in your burrow, you were able to see it, quite a lot, didn't you?" Bunnix heard the previous quiet statement rather clearly thanks to her giant rabbit ears.
"You are able to look into the future and into the past, just like me. Some villains can travel in time too, or mix it all up, just like we saw it happen. Actually, it may be useful to explain when I come from ..." Tuzi stopped her story when she heard someone walk in their direction.
"We should not draw too much attention to ourselves here." Bunnix felt the urge to hide too, she stared at a man who was dressed up in western fashion, his huge red nose dominated his facial features while his huge belly hung over his waist.
A group of men were coming from the other side and Bunnix accidentally tipped over a small cart of fish that spilled over the stone embankment. That group of men went quickly after the fish, while the two heroes had little time to hide better.